Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/95

Rh less than all the others, to be indisputable; but should this be doubted, it cannot be doubted that it is the only disputable point. Hence the system humbly piques itself on having abridged the grounds of philosophical controversy—on having, if not abolished, at any rate reduced them to their narrowest possible limits.

§ 76. This introduction may be appropriately terminated by an explanation of the means by which these Institutes have succeeded in getting to the beginning, or absolute starting-point, of philosophy—for the beginning will be itself better understood if the reader has been brought to understand how it has been reached. Indeed, unless he understands this, the starting-point will probably appear to him to be arbitrary; he will still be possessed with a suspicion that some other starting-point was possible. But so soon as he sees how this starting-point is attained, that suspicion will disappear: he will see that no other beginning could have been selected.

§ 77. The epistemology, as has been said, is the proximate section of our science; that is, it is the first which has to be entered on, and got through. The comprehensive question, coextensive with this whole division, is,—What is knowledge?—what is knowing and the known? But this, in its present